The demand for systems that monitor homes and businesses for alarm and lifestyle conditions has continued to grow as more home and business owners seek to protect their premises from various hazards and threats such as intrusion, fire, carbon monoxide and flooding, or to control lifestyle systems such as lighting, thermostats and energy management devices.
When a sensor such as a motion detector is triggered, a representative at a remote monitoring center receives an alarm event code and initiates a response process, including contacting a homeowner or others on a contact list and/or first responders such as local firefighters and/or police to request a dispatch to the premises.
For example, a remote monitoring center may include a remote life safety monitoring center that monitors life safety features associated with a control unit at the premises in which the remote monitoring center receives life safety data from the control unit. For example, with respect to fire and carbon monoxide detectors/sensors, life safety data may include at least one carbon monoxide readings, smoke detection reading, sensor location and time of reading, among other related to these detectors that may be communicated to the remote monitoring center. In yet another example, with respect to a door contact detector, life safety data may include at least one of sensor location and time of detection, among other data related to the door contact detection that may be communicated to the remote monitoring center 20.
Alarm event data from the premises may be used by the remote monitoring center in running through various life safety response processes in notifying the owner of the premises, determining whether an actual alarm event is occurring at the premises, and notifying any appropriate response agency (e.g., police, fire, emergency response).
The same or separate remote monitoring center may also include a life style system/service that allows for various life style features associated with the control. The remote life style system may receive life style data from the control unit. For example, with respect to temperature control, life style data may include thermostat readings. In yet another example, with respect to video capture devices, life style data may include at least one of captured images, video, time of video capture and video location, among other data related to video capture devices that may be communicate to the remote monitoring center. The remote monitoring center may also provide updates to the control unit such as updates to features associated with life safety and/or life style operating system. Those of ordinary skill in the art will appreciate that video and other data may also be used by the life safety monitoring center
These systems do not readily allow a user to easily see alarm events or obtain other information from the alarm system, whether life safety or life style, because the user must be at or near a panel or have a wireless device such as a smartphone running an application with them. The result is that that there is a lack of real-time feedback of alarm or lifestyle events, as they occur, to a user at the premises.